Canta Per Me Sing For Me
by also known as LuLu
Summary: “If only you'd told him...” Songfic, Angsty!Medda.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Newsies or the song "Canta Per Me". It belongs to the folks who made the anime series Noir. And the translation belongs to the folks at animelyrics.com, where I got it from. So no one sue me, because I like the pitiful paychecks I get from work.  
  
**Notes:** Vinyl, I *said* I'd write a songfic when I signed off last night! Here it is :D It's a Medda songfic. There's not enough Medda stories out there, and I hope this one is satisfactory (even though she's really bitter ^^;). Italics are song lyrics (in Italian, and thank you Wu for telling me ^_^), and don't worry, the translation appears beneath them.  
  
_Canta Per Me (Sing For Me)_  
by LuLu  
  
Well, what can I say that you haven't heard already, dear? I'm weary of writing letters that are never answered. But I'm telling you this anyway, holding on tightly to the small shred of hope I have that you'll at the very least read it.  
  
He's been sleeping here again. And I, being the fool that I am, let him.   
  
_canta per me a dio  
quel dolce suono  
nei passati giorni  
  
sing to god for me  
that sweet sound  
in passed days  
you were in my mind  
_  
He chooses the oddest places. It used to almost make me laugh out loud, trying to guess where he would pick _that _night. In the beginning, he would take the extra cot I kept in my room for such occasions. And then he moved into the costume room, where he made a bed on piles of silken linens. This was all before, of course. Before you went away. Before he could live without fear of late-night drunken beatings or authoritarian police interrogations concerning possible crime in the area. When all he wanted was a night of peaceful sleep, vacant of the nightmares he had at home, with a gentle lullaby from a songbird. I gave him all those things, dear, all the things you couldn't. Now that he's started to come back, he's been choosing more uncomfortable places, like in the high balconies and across a string of seats. Sometimes he'll even sleep on the stage, with its hardwood surface that I swear is rougher to the touch at night. He won't even let me sing him to sleep like I used to.  
  
I wonder if he fears again, or if he's torturing himself for hurting that girl he loved so much. He threw it away so quickly, after all, and for someone who tossed him aside so soon.  
  
Have I caught your attention yet? Is this starting to sound familiar?  
  
_la vita e l'amore  
dilette del cuor mio  
o felice tu anima mia  
canta adagio  
  
life and love  
favorite of my heart  
oh, happy you, my soul  
sing slowly_  
  
I don't know who I hate more sometimes -- our father, or my mother for sleeping with him. She had her reasons, of course, as much as they disgust me. I hope Papa realized every day how good he had it with your mother, and I hope that when he prayed each night, he thanked God for making her take him back after I was born. I know I thanked Him every day for letting me stay with him, your mother, and you. It was a good, solid life, better than the one I could have had. And I had you to look out for me, your little half-sister with bright eyes and an undying devotion to the family she had been dropped into.  
  
Looking back, I almost laugh at my innocence, that I couldn't see the man that you would become. Not quite your father in some respects, I will admit, but in other aspects you surpass his duplicity.  
  
_tetra la cetra e canta  
l'inno di morte  
ah, no, si schiude il ciel  
volano adagio  
  
gloomy the cithara and sing  
the death hymn  
ah, no, the sky is opening  
fly slowly_  
  
High times, hard times. Since we've grown up, I've always landed on my feet, dear, with my successful business and satisfying life. And you've landed yourself in prison with a dead wife and a bitter son who doesn't even know that he has an aunt because of his grandfather's extramarital affair with a whore. All because his father refused to share the story of his own father's sin with his son.  
  
Don't you think Francis would have been better off knowing about sweet Aunt Margaret Sullivan early on instead of later discovering cabaret songbird Medda Larkson? It was too late by the time he met me. If only you'd told him. He would have listened to me better if he had known who I really was. I could have kept from diverging off into that life of crime, and that time in the Refuge where he was forced to become a fugitive. I could have kept him from having to become Jack Kelly.  
  
But then again, Jack Kelly led a thousand voices against Joseph Pulitzer, which isn't all that bad when you consider the errors of Francis Sullivan's fathers.  
  
_la vita e l'amore  
dilette del cuor mio  
o felice tu anima mia  
canta a dio  
  
life and love  
favorite of my heart  
oh, happy you, my soul  
sing to god_  
  
Damn you, Peter Sullivan. And damn your father -- _my _father and _our _father -- too.  
  
I no longer do this because of you. Have you figured that out yet, dear? I do this because he needs someone to watch over him, something he's lost years of already.   
  
I'm sure I know what you're thinking now, Peter dear. If you finally write me the letter I've been waiting for all these years, you can set things straight and be his hero again, because you've told him about his long-lost family.  
  
Do you understand that it's too late to tell him now? He won't believe me. I'm just the actress playing another part. He won't believe you either, since you've destroyed all the faith he had in you. He's smarter than you may remember him. He knows who not to trust. You're one of them.  
  
Don't worry, I'm almost done. One more letter that you'll never answer is nearly finished.   
  
_la vita e l'amore  
con in mente te  
cuor mio   
  
life and love  
with you in my mind  
heart of mine _  
  
I'm watching him sleep now, thinking that I'm starting to gain back what you denied to me seventeen years ago. What he doesn't know, he doesn't know, I understand, and he will not be told these things. Just know that I keep them in mind and close to my heart every time I look at him.  
  
Tomorrow, if he comes to stay here again, I'll help him rise above the grief he feels and he'll be able to sleep in the costume room once more.  
  
To sleep in peace again. And a new lullaby from his songbird. I owe at least that much to him.  



End file.
